The transportation industry often requires additional parking areas for temporary vehicle storage prior to vehicle transfer and/or distribution. Such parking areas are typically needed adjacent rail yards and automotive production facilities. These additional parking areas are frequently only needed for a relatively short period of time, such as two or three months. Additional parking areas could instead be intended for semi-permanent (multi-year, though not indefinite-term) use, for reasons including utilizing the property pending sale or further development, or providing parking for a long-term but fixed-end-date project. Hence, it is often desirable to minimize the time and expenses associated with constructing additional parking areas, whether for multi-month or multi-year use.
Traditionally parking lots are constructed by covering a land area with concrete or asphalt. These traditional construction methods provide a desirable hard surface for vehicles to be driven on, but are time-consuming and expensive to provide. Further, covering the land area with concrete or asphalt can create complications in the project, such as having to construct a retention pond to deal with excess rain water, since the surface is not permeable. Finally, even a semi-permanent parking lot is expensive and difficult to remove when made of concrete or asphalt, and removal may leave the underlying ground surface undesirably altered.
Other, less permanent methods for constructing parking lots are also known. These other methods include covering a land area with gravel, wood chips, or shredded rubber from recycled tires. These non-traditional methods reduce the time and expenses associated with constructing the parking areas. However, these methods do not provide the desired parking surface, and can lead to the vehicles being damaged. Such vehicle damage can range from scratches in a vehicle's paint to extensive body damage caused by vehicles sliding into one another when excessive rain washes away the gravel, wood chips, or shredded rubber, and turns at least a portion of the parking area into a mud pit.